Identify BBP metrics we need from github

[pjmaechling]

SCEC web developers determined it looks like detailed tracking is currently not possible. We cannot add JavaScript to pages displayed when you land on your repository so google analytics can't be added that way.

See this GitHub issue requesting to allow google analytics on repositories:
isaacs/github#446

GitHub does provide data on the last 14 days of traffic. The data it exposes is listed here:
https://help.github.com/articles/viewing-traffic-to-a-repository/

There have been attempts to game the system using a tracking image and google analytics. The idea is to add an image in your readme.md (which is the text that is displayed when you land on a repository) coming directly from a server you control thus providing some tracking data. I tested adding an image from scec.org but GitHub seems to serve it from a CDN so it doesn't seem promising. In any case, here's detail on that method:

• https://www.sitepoint.com/using-beacon-image-github-website-email-analytics/
• https://github.com/igrigorik/ga-beacon

Recently, GitHub exposed the traffic data they collect via a JSON API. A script could be created to poll this API periodically, storing the data ourselves thus getting around the 2-week limit. GitHub official traffic API:

https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/traffic/

This would allow at least some tracking data to be gathered over the long term. As you can see in the links above, with this API one can track top referrers, top repo paths visited, visitors, unique visitors, and clones.